Word: coupes
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...bankrolling Reid's generous salary? Could it be former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled billionaire who - so his enemies claim - was pulling the strings behind the Somchai government? Thaksin was toppled in a 2006 military coup and the following year bought Manchester City, a struggling football club where Reid was once player-manager. Sentenced in absentia in October to two years in jail for conflict of interest, Thaksin remains a deeply divisive figure, loved by rural Thais but loathed by the urban élite...
...lapses before and after last month's attacks: the arrest of Mukhtar Ahmed. Ahmed was held by the West Bengal police on Friday night for procuring mobile-phone cards for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the organization suspected of staging the Mumbai attacks. His arrest might have counted as a coup against the extremist group, except for the fact that Ahmed is reported to be an undercover intelligence operative for the Jammu and Kashmir police. Having infiltrated their networks, he had been supplying militants with phone cards, and that had enabled the security forces to monitor some of the militants' communications...
...That seems almost inevitable. A billionaire populist, Thaksin was deposed in a 2006 military coup amid corruption charges and now lives in exile overseas. His supporters, reconstituted as the PPP, won elections last year. Even before the PPP was banned, another shell party called Puea Thai had been formed. Somchai, who is Thaksin's brother-in-law, is now exiled from politics. But other Thaksin allies will helm Puea Thai, from which the next Prime Minister will likely be picked in the next week...
...government leadership, including the current prime minister, would step down, anti-government protesters occupying Bangkok's two main airports erupted into cheers and waived Thai flags. Red-shirted government supporters, who had gathered outside the court building to try and prevent the proceedings, dismissed the decision as a judicial coup d'etat...
...government supporters' claim that the verdict was an act of judicial activism was dismissed by some. "The court had plenty of evidence to justify its decision," said Jade Donavanik, a former dean of the faculty of law at Siam University. "This is not a judicial coup because the evidence was there. It may be perceived that way because only government coalition parties were on trial. The opposition Democrats were not, but they hadn't had any case brought against them from the beginning...